MSUL through the University Archives and Historical Collections is the caretaker of MSU's rich history including its born and digitized content. Currently, very little of this digital content is available to students, faculty, staff and the public. This project was proposed as one method of preserving and providing access to these resources. The project is executed with the MSUL's Digital Preservation Working Group as an opportunity to experiment with this tool for use among MSUL units. It also provides an opportunity to collaborate outside MSUL and MSU through our membership in this consortium for hosting Preservica. Ideas and documents are shared using the BaseCamp tool.

Timeline

• Original start was summer 2019 but was put aside due to other priorities after some initial successful testing with basic functionality and training courses.
• Resumed late summer 2020 after merging of the UAHC and SPC collection management tool, ArchivesSpace. Basic functionality rechecked.
• Integration with ArchivesSpace was setup and verified in fall 2020.
• Ingesting of content from previous Archivematica system begun fall 2020. Continue into 2021.
• Other test cases from evaluation plan execution began late 2020. Continue into 2021.
• Preservica user procedures drafting Nov 2020 - Jan 2021.
• Evaluation report draft started December 2020.
• Ingesting content for user experience evaluation Dec 2020 - Jan 2021.
• Public Interface support from MSUL Web Services, Jan - Feb 2021.
• Selected User Experience Evaluation Jan - Mar 2021.
• Complete Evaluation Report Spring 2021. Make recommendations.

Collaboration with MSU St. Andrews facility to train staff on book design in MS Word to develop a compilation of student writing and research proceedings from the MSU St. Andrews Writing Fellowship. We printed 150 copies of Still Connected and 100 copies of Proceedings of the MSU St. Andrews Summer Research Fellowship. This collaboration brought in about $2400 to the Libraries for the consultation and book production, and it will likely be an annual collaboration. This collaboration strengthens the partnership between the MSU Library and the MSU St. Andrews facility. The service provided expertise to the St. Andrews research fellowship program and training for staff at the St. Andrews facility. The books we produced increase the visibility of MSU Libraries and MSU in general and the print-on-demand nature of the service provides an innovative way to disseminate student work.

Per their website, the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) is a gateway to graduate education at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities. The goal of the program is to increase the number of underrepresented students who pursue graduate study and research careers. SROP helps prepare undergraduates for graduate study through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities. SROP has been happening at MSU for more than 10 years, but not until 2019 did Erik Ponder get involved to promote the library as a resource for SROP interns while on campus. After his brief talk to the 2019 cohort, Erik realized the library could be much more involved in the program, and he set out to convince program director Steven Thomas to give MSU Libraries a larger role. Steven agreed to bring the interns to the library for an afternoon at the beginning of the 10-week program, and Erik created a committee tasked to plan a tailored library introduction. When campus closed, SROP was reimagined as a virtual 4-week program with 28 interns rather than 80, and the MSUL session went virtual as well.

https://grad.msu.edu/srop